Giving Thanks

We spend Thanksgiving each year with my DH side of the family and this year, as always, we had a hoot of a time. With 13 adults and 5 kids running around there was much laughter and thanksgiving this year. The turkey was beautiful to gaze at and even yummier to eat. ALL the fixins were scrumptious.

Again this year, I escaped having to cook anything. I don't know who is more thankful for that...me or those who would have had to eat what I made. Instead, I took on, for the third year, the task of setting/decorating the table. Following are a few pix of this year's Thanksgiving dinner table.

Winter Wonderland Swap '07

Apparently, my swap partner didn't have access to Santa's "naughty/nice" list as she thought I'd been very, very good as evidenced by the absolutely WONDERFUL package she put together for me.

This was my first swap as a hostess. The matching of partners was a bit daunting but overall the swap has been a huge success, which makes me very happy.

Anyway, back to my package I received. My swap partner, Jeanie, sent me the following wonderful items: two sets of beautiful stitch markers for different sized needles, some wonderful hot teas and cocoa mixes that were packed in the precious holiday tin. The teas had the cutest names like "Nutcracker Sweet", "Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride" and "Sugar Plum Spice". I'd noted on my questionnaire that one of my most favorite things about the holidays was the smell of Mom & Dad's house when we go home for Christmas. Every time I open the tin, the smell of those teas transport me there immediately. It is SO heavenly a smell. Mmmm. The creme de la creme of the package, however, was the two balls of HAND-DYED yarn! The colorway is one she named "Sea" and it is beyond scrumptious! It is a wool, alpaca, silk blend and I THINK I've decided to take my first venture into the world of knitting socks using this yarn. My swap partner sent me a whole group of patterns to select from and I'm wavering between a cloche type hat and the "Rainy Day Socks" pattern from MagKnits. Hmmm.... Decisions, decisions.

Before I ripped into the package...

The goodies my Secret Santa sent!

It's Gonna Be a BOY!

Got the call from my brother and sister-in-law today... they are having a baby BOY!!! I'm so excited I can barely contain myself! I've already decided what I'm going to knit for my little nephew first! Oh I can't wait to meet him!

More Time, More Money....More Headaches!

So we thought we'd done everything right when we were preparing to paint the exterior of our home (see earlier posts as to reason we decided to paint). We looked at a million color cards and selected the "finalists". We spent the money and bought a quart of the finalists to put up so we could determine the "winner". The "winner" actually ended up being one that was between the "Rattan Palm" and "Sweet Annie" colors that are visable in the pix posted earlier. It was a slate green color. What we didn't pay attention to was that the slate green color was an interior paint so when we went to get the exterior paint in this color the store ended up having to do a "custom" mix of it. Whatever... didn't think it would be a HUGE deal. Boy, were we wrong. Got home and painted the front of the house. It was evening when we finished and it finally dried and, to be honest, ANYTHING was better than the white. HOWEVER, the next day, when we could really see it..... tears came to my eyes as it was the WRONG color. In fact, it wasn't anywhere near ANY of the colors we'd selected as our finalists. It was a blue spruce! (Not that there is anything wrong with that color but it wasn't what we wanted!) Unfortunately, due to the HUGE headache and multiple screw-ups the day it was purchased, we failed to triple check the swatch to the paint and being custom, it wasn't returnable. URG.

Forget custom colors! We opted to get the color that matched it most closely in a "standard" color and after MUCH searching found it! Our home was going to be "Homestead Resort Olive". It was lighter than the "Rattan Palm" but still retained some of that slate coloring which was EXACTLY what we wanted and it was less yellow than "Sweet Annie" and a little darker. We were so very excited to have found the right color!

This morning, after we'd painted part of the front again with the new "correct" (or so we thought) color yesterday evening....did I mention that in my excitement the other evening before realizing the initial color was WAY wrong, I'd already pulled all the tape off the front of the house so I could begin taping for trim so I had to RE-TAPE everything again for the "right" color??....we were a bit shocked to learn that the paint didn't dry as dark as it should have. It looks like we have "Sweet Annie" on the house instead of the "Homestead Resort Olive". It is SO much better than the blue spruce color but is significantly more "yellow" than what we'd selected. What will we do? Go back to the paint store and demand they fix it...at THEIR cost this time since it wasn't a custom mix color or will we just go with it as we are SO SICK of this whole experience?

I guess you'll have to tune back soon to find out as even I don't know how this story will end.

Going & Blowing

"Going and blowing" was just a nice way of saying that I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off the past few weeks working on my various projects. I'm very proud to note that I actually finished one! I know... I know... people who know me are in complete shock!

A friend had given us his daughter's old furniture which she'd outgrown. It includes a headboard, small bookcase and a bookcase with toy box attached. I started in on the headboard. I wanted to refinish it to more closely match my old dresser that I have in the kids' room. The first pix of of the headboard is after my first coat of stain on the main body, or rather what was SUPPOSEDLY a staining shortcut...NOT. We bought the stain and poly together. This is not a good thing for me cause, as you can see in the first photo, I had a WEE bit of an issue with the running. Of course, working on it at night didn't help my ability to see the runs in the first place. Had to sand them out and give it another go...in the daylight this time. You can see, in the first pix the original color of the pieces there on the roof as it I didn't work on it until last.


The finished headboard... Okay, so I've completed 2 projects. The quilt on my daughter's bed is one that my great-grandmother made for me when I was young. I had to make some repairs to the backing and give it a MAJOR washing as it suffered some damage and was embedded with a TON dirt after being in the tornado that hit our home years ago. My last visit to the folk's home had me helping to clean out the storage building where I found this quilt (and one for my brother) in a bag up in the rafters still waiting for repair. It cleaned up exceptionally well and is now being put to use again and that makes me very, very happy.

As for other projects in process...wow, that list is never-ending but I've got some that are further along today than they were a week ago.

We have a group of gals that get together once a month to work on a project in one another's yard. We call ourselves "Garden Hoes". Our first project was to create a flowerbed around Rose's mailbox. To make things even MORE interesting, I was nominated to paint Rose's mailbox to make for a complete makeover. Well, that was weekend before last and I'm STILL not done with the mailbox. I'm close...just have to do the flowers on the second side. I've made the numbers thicker so they are easier to see. Have learned that I can NOT paint flowers. HA HA... Anyway, here is the mailbox (one side anyway).

Got a little more work done on my little bit of "Eden". Pictures will probably come along before too long to show the progress there. I want to get a bit more in the ground first.

Frogged a sweater so I could recycle the wool for a sweater I'm wanting to knit for my son. Got the yarn measured and balled up so that was a nice task to complete. NOW I just have to redesign this one sweater to fit my needs/wants and get knitting on that....as though I don't have enough I'm knitting already.

Lastly, at least I think, we dug up one of the flowerbeds next to the house, lined it with bricks and moved the outdoor bar over and just made it a much nicer looking area. ALSO, by the bricks being there, my dogs will no longer be digging up that area. Slowly but surely, we are getting the house looking a little nicer...on the outside at least. Also started filling nail holes and prepping house for painting, which I'm hoping to get done within the month.

Whew! It was a fun and busy weekend. At least I finally have some FOs (finished objects)!

Baby It's Cold Outside

Okay, so there are many places much cooler today than Austin, but considering just yesterday I was wearing flipflops, shorts and a tee and sweating, 55 degrees today is burrrrrrr-nilly. I'm more looking toward the remainder of the week's 70-something weather.

My Little Eden

Wow, I'm back and it hasn't been a month or more. I just couldn't wait to share some pix of recent projects (outside, anyway). These first two pix are of my little "Eden" I'd referenced in the previous post. Unfortunately, the pix here show a couple of the panels down as we had to remove them to back the Jeep in to tow out the tectonic plate which you can see in the middle of the bed. Ended up having to break it into four pieces before we could get them pulled. I kept waiting for someone from the other side of the world to pop up out of the hole we created and say, "HELLO!". It was a huge rock. Anyway, the panels are back up and I'm now working on laying down cloth, spreading mulch and getting my plants in the ground. I'm so very happy with my little plot of garden space. No dogs to dig up and eat my plants. No little fingers to pluck the first blooms off anything that flowers.... Of course, it has much to go before it is as beautiful as it is in my head, but it will get there.



Okay, so in one of the previous photos you can catch a glimpse of the candy cane house. Here is our sample swatches of the colors we are looking at painting the house instead. I can barely wait to get the thing painted. Oh, in case you were wondering, the "winning" main color is one that is right between the two you see in the pix. We also redid the lower flowerbed. Dug up all the plants, leveled and lay down landscape cloth and coverd with pea gravel. I TOTALLY love the end result. Of course, keeping little ones from moving all that gravel will be a challenge but...